The Reckoning (71 page)

John Anstey controlled his features with a valiant effort. 'I
don't think that would at all be a wise action, Lady Barbara.
It would be impossible to keep it secret, and once it was
known we'd tried to stop the trial, it would be as good as
admitting we believed Lord Harvey to be guilty.'

‘
Oh, why didn't the wretched man go abroad at once when his wife died,' Lady Barbara grumbled, 'and take that woman
with him? That would have solved all the problems. But no,
he had to hang around, waiting to be taken up like a common
criminal –’

Marcus dug his nails into his palms and forced himself to
speak calmly. 'Mama, I must beg you not to say things like
that in front of Rosamund or Polly –'

‘
He's brought disgrace on us all,' Lady Barbara went on,
ignoring him. 'Everyone's talking about us. I hardly know
where to look when I go out in the carriage, with all the
staring and whispering. Lady Tewkesbury was exceedingly
unpleasant yesterday when I passed her in the Park. Yes, it's
all very well for you, Marcus, to talk about ignoring it, but
what about your sister? How is she to find a suitable match if
everyone knows she's cousin to a murderer? Well, if Eldon's
failed us, the Prince must do something, that's all. Rosamund
must go to the Prince and use her mother's influence to have
him call the whole thing off.’

Marcus cast a despairing look at Lord Anstey, who inter
vened gently. 'Eldon says that there's very little to worry
about, Lady Barbara. He doesn't believe the evidence
amounts to very much, and probably it won't go beyond the
Assizes. But even if it did come to a trial, it would be in the
House of Lords, of course, now that Sale has come into the title; and the Lords would be very unlikely to convict, espe
cially in view of –'

‘
A trial in the House of Lords?' Lady Barbara cried,
mottling with anger. ‘No, that really is too much! The
publicity – the notoriety! We should never hold up our heads
again!'

‘
Far better, ma'am, surely, that Lord Harvey be tried and
acquitted as innocent, than have people say for the rest of his
life that he was too guilty to be brought to trial?’

But Lady Barbara plainly didn't agree. 'We shall be talked
of whatever happens,' she snapped. 'You should never have
married into that family, Marcus! I told you so again and again, but you wouldn't listen. There were any number of
nice, respectable girls you could have had, but no, you would
have Rosamund Chetwyn, in spite of –'

‘
Mama, don't go on, please!' Marcus said, embarrassed to
have his mother expose herself in this way before a man he
respected.

‘
Bad blood on both sides,' Lady Barbara flashed defiantly.
‘Lady Theakston was always wild to fault, and look at her
disgraceful liaison with that sea-captain, whatever his name
was! And as to Lord Aylesbury, well! The talk there was about
him and that –'

‘
Mama! Enough!' Marcus thundered, managing at last to
silence his mother. Lord Anstey was white and tight-lipped,
while Barbarina had begun to cry silently with distress and
embarrassment. 'You forget yourself,' Marcus went on more quietly, but no less forcefully. 'We are all one family now. I
forbid you to say such things, ever, to anyone.'

‘
You
forbid?' Lady Barbara said, beside herself. 'You? How
dare you? How dare you speak to me like that –’

The door opened, and Rosamund came in. She had been sitting with Polly upstairs, and had just been told that her
husband and Lord Anstey had arrived.

‘
What news?' she asked eagerly as she entered, before she
had time to notice the atmosphere. 'Oh Lord Anstey, have
you had any luck?'

‘
The luck of this family ran out when my son married you!'
Lady Barbara hissed, coming to her feet so suddenly that
Rosamund instinctively took a step backwards. 'You're your
mother's daughter, that's plain enough! But who was your
father, answer me that? Barbarina, come!’

She stalked out, thrusting past Rosamund in the doorway,
leaving her more bewildered than angry. Barbarina, still
crying into her handkerchief, remained where she was. Rosa
mund looked from one face to another, and then went auto
matically to comfort her sister-in-law.

‘
What was all that about?' she asked, replacing Barbarina's
flimsy handkerchief with a stouter, drier one, and stroking
her hair away from her wet face. 'There, don't cry, Bab, no-
one's going to shout at you any more.’

Marcus found his legs were trembling, and sat down
abruptly opposite his wife and sister.

‘Mama's a little upset,' he defended feebly.

‘
Eldon says there's no way of stopping the legal process,'
Lord Anstey explained. 'But he doesn't believe the Grand
Jury will return a true bill on the evidence we know about, so
it will never come to trial.'

‘
Then what is your mama in such a taking for?' Rosamund
asked, drying Barbarina's face like a brisk mother cat.

‘
She thinks that whatever happens, the notoriety will
damage us,' Marcus explained unhappily.

‘
Well, there's nothing we can do about that, is there?'
Rosamund said stoically. 'Better now, Bab? That's right, sit
up straight and take deep breaths.'

‘
She thinks Harvey should have gone abroad and taken
Polly with him,' Marcus said reluctantly.

Rosamund looked up. 'Good God, does she really think
poor Harvey's guilty, then?' She looked from face to face, and
her expression hardened. 'Do
you
think he's guilty?'

‘
No, of course not,' Lord Anstey said firmly. 'But she is
right in a way – there will always be those who think so,
whatever the outcome.'

‘
Well, we don't care for them,' Rosamund said with equal firmness. 'They aren't the people who matter. As long as we
present an unbroken front to the world – Marcus, you had
better have another word with your mother.'

‘
Yes,' Marcus said unhappily. It wasn't so much the words
he must have with her that he dreaded, but those she would
have with him.

*

On the morning of the Assizes, Polly was in a state of collapse.
The housemaid who had been maiding her sent for Rosa
mund, who came accompanied by Moss, and found her white
and trembling, barely able to stand.

‘
Come, now, Polly, you must pull yourself together,' Rosamund said briskly, when she had sent the housemaid away. 'I
shall lend you Moss to dress you and do your hair, but you
must get up and try to be resolute.’

Polly looked at her despairingly, her teeth chattering. 'I
can't,' she whispered. 'I'm so afraid.'

‘
Moss, where's that potion of yours? Ah! And are you sure
that's how Docwra mixes it? Very well. Now, Polly, this will
stiffen your spine and put some courage into you. Really, you
are being very cow-hearted! Come now, drink it down.’

Polly drank the blood-red potion, gasped, coughed, and
immediately looked a little less transparent.

‘
The trouble is that you've hardly eaten for days,' Rosa
mund went on briskly, as she and Moss helped Polly to her
feet. 'You really are a fool. Don't you want to help Harvey?'

‘Of course I do, but you don't understand –'

‘
Yes I do. It's very unpleasant to be called upon as a
witness, to have to stand up in court, and talk about things
you would sooner forget. But at least they've dropped that
dreadful nonsense about the babies being poisoned. And you
know what Lord Anstey told us Eldon said: once this is over,
it will all be over, and Harvey will be a free man.'

‘
You
don't
understand,' Polly said bleakly. 'They'll ask me
questions and – and I can't lie. I'll have to tell them every
thing.’

Rosamund looked alarmed. 'No you won't. You'll answer
only what you're asked, and no more. You and Harvey went
to the fair together at Minnie's own request. You came back
together and found her lying dead on the path. And that will
be that. I'm afraid,' she added gravely, 'that it may start up
talk of suicide, but better that than murder. Come now, brace
up, and let Moss dress you. I'll come back for you in half an
hour.'

‘
Rosamund –!' Polly called her back as she was about to
leave. 'Thank you, for being so kind to me. I can guess what
people are saying about me.'

‘
No you can't,' Rosamund said briskly, hoping sincerely
that Polly never found out what the Fauncett-Tewkesbury
camp were saying. 'Don't worry, I'll be with you the whole
time. It will be all right.’

Once outside the door, she allowed herself to sag a little.
This business, she thought, had aged her ten years in as many
weeks. And when it was over, she told herself grimly, she
would get rid of Lady Barbara by hook or by crook. If it had
not been for her interference, Rosamund might have kept Hill
from voicing her suspicions publicly.

*

On Monday the 7th November, Brandreth and two other
Pentrich rebels were hanged on the green in front of Derby
gaol, before a huge crowd of spectators. The heads were
afterwards severed from the bodies and displayed on poles,
but the Prince Regent had graciously remitted the sentence of
quartering that was customary in cases of High Treason.
Twenty-three more rebels had been sentenced to imprison
ment or transportation, and twenty others had been
acquitted. It was generally held to be a very salutary lesson to
any who felt they could bring down the Government by
unlawful means.

In London, the event was washed into oblivion by the tide
of shock and grief which followed the news that Princess
Charlotte, the Regent's only daughter, and heir to the throne
of England, had died the day before in childbed of a stillborn
son, after eighteen months of happy marriage to Prince
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. The princess, pretty, intelligent,
witty, and charming, had been the adored favourite not only
of her father and grandparents, but of the whole country.
People had looked to her to make England a better place
when she succeeded her much hated father, and to save them
from rule by any of his increasingly unpopular brothers. She
was mourned deeply and sincerely by a shocked and bewil
dered populace.